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Evolution My ToE

Alone

Banned by request
Hope you don't mind me just jumping in to ask one question. I'm just curious. Do you agree with those people who say that not having evidence is the substance of faith?
Well....... I'm not sure I'm still trying to figure out what I believe.
 

Jose Fly

Fisker of men
Macroevolutionary hypotheses can be tested by using them to generate predictions then asking whether observations from the biological world match those predictions [philosophical - outside of science
By that standard, any science that deals with events that aren't directly observed (e.g., archaeology, genetics, forensics, cosmology, geology) is "outside of science". Of course no scientist is beholden to your made-up, arbitrary standards.
 

nPeace

Veteran Member
Well....... I'm not sure I'm still trying to figure out what I believe.
Oh. Okay. So not anchored. Threading the waters.
These are dangerous waters, but I suspect if the material is good quality, eventually when you decide to drop anchor, it should hold in the right place.

If you are interested, you can explore this thread - Faith and Facts. It's only five pages, so you shouldn't get lost.

Jesus spoke well of John the Baptist regarding his faith, and being anchored.
(Luke 7:24) When the messengers of John had gone away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed being tossed by the wind?
Wind can toss about a reed. We know what strong winds do to ships, so I hope you get your anchor down in the right place. (Ephesians 4:14)

Enjoy.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Yes I am following you so far, some people would say that not having evidence is the substance of faith?
The problem with faith is that it is not a pathway to the truth. Hindus have faith, Muslims have faith. Are their gods the right gods?


But it is good that you follow. Though there will be some testing of this concept. Will reply more in a bit.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Oh. Okay. So not anchored. Threading the waters.
These are dangerous waters, but I suspect if the material is good quality, eventually when you decide to drop anchor, it should hold in the right place.

If you are interested, you can explore this thread - Faith and Facts. It's only five pages, so you shouldn't get lost.

Jesus spoke well of John the Baptist regarding his faith, and being anchored.
(Luke 7:24) When the messengers of John had gone away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed being tossed by the wind?
Wind can toss about a reed. We know what strong winds do to ships, so I hope you get your anchor down in the right place. (Ephesians 4:14)

Enjoy.
The problem is how does one test the Bible to see if it is reliable? We know that it got that much of it is wrong, though that does not mean that the underlying story is wrong. After all even you can't believe the Noah's Ark myth. That over 5 vertical miles of water came and left the Earth magically without leaving a mark. And that is just the beginning.

Much of that thread that you linked consists of believers demonstrating that they do not understand either facts or evidence.
 

Alone

Banned by request
The problem is how does one test the Bible to see if it is reliable? We know that it got that much of it is wrong, though that does not mean that the underlying story is wrong. After all even you can't believe the Noah's Ark myth. That over 5 vertical miles of water came and left the Earth magically without leaving a mark. And that is just the beginning.

Much of that thread that you linked consists of believers demonstrating that they do not understand either facts or evidence.
I would say that if the Noah's ark account is a myth it is no more harder to believe than an ice age? Or dinosaurs, or I am the long descendant of a monkey?.
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
I would say that if the Noah's ark account is a myth it is no more harder to believe than an ice age? Or dinosaurs, or I am the long descendant of a monkey?.

The difference is that both evolution and ice ages have a ridiculous amount of objective independently verifiable evidence going for them.

And last but not least, neither requires the violation of any natural laws.

While the noah story has no evidence at all (it's just a legend story in an ancient book) and requires the violation of natural laws from top to bottom. Literally ALL key aspects of this story are physically impossible.

Worse still, the evidence we DO have, doesn't match up with this story at all.


So the real question is.... what is more important to you?
Actual evidence, or just the comfort of clinging to some bronze age folk tale...

If you care about actually being rationally justified in your beliefs, then you'll choose the path of evidence any day of the week.
If on the other hand you want to hold on to some religious beliefs simply because you like them, then I guess evidence doesn't matter.

But off course, the latter option doesn't make the evidence go away.
All you'll accomplish, is holding beliefs that can't rationally be justified and which actually require the irrational position of ignoring the actual evidence that contradicts the beliefs....

So....

Do you care about being rationally justified in your beliefs?
Is it important to you that the things that you believe, are actually accurate?
Do you want your beliefs about the world to match the evidence of reality?
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
I would say that if the Noah's ark account is a myth it is no more harder to believe than an ice age? Or dinosaurs, or I am the long descendant of a monkey?.


And this is where your lack of education in the sciences becomes obvious, and why the concept of evidence is so important. There is massive evidence for the ice ages. There are literally mountains of evidence for the theory of evolution that tells us that not only that you are the descendant of a "monkey" you technically still are a "monkey". There is no reliable evidence that supports the myths of Genesis.

Remember, to have evidence one needs an idea. That idea needs to be testable. That means it needs to be possible to show that it is wrong if it is incorrect by a reasonable test. You can't rely on testing another idea. Your idea needs to be tested on its own merits.

Let's go over whale evolution, a concept that creatonists are a little more comfortable with. When many creationists think "evolution" they also think fossils. They do not realize that fossilization if a very rare event. For land animals most species are not preserved at all. For example we have almost no fossils of chimpanzee evolution, after the split with humans, because they lived in forested areas. They tend to be damp and bones tend to rot long before they can be buried and preserved. No preserved bones, no fossil record. Our ancestors left the forest which is why we have a very clear line of fossils all the way back to "Lucy". But to get back on track. The theory of evolution had already been confirmed countless times before whale evolution was even studied. It was a known fact. I do not want any claims of "circular reasoning" here.

The first whale ancestor that was found was Pakicetus. It was a more than reasonable conclusion that whale ancestors had to be land living mammals since whales are mammals and mammals evolved on the land. What first gave it away was the ear. Whales have a very distinctive set of ear bones and here was a clear land animal that had a whale's ear. There was more evidence besides that, but it was a starting point. It also helped to narrow the search for more whale ancestors. And they were found. The changes were also what the theory of evolution predicted. Theories also can be used to make predictions and the theories can be tested by those predictions. For example they found that the nostrils slowly moved back with time. Pakicetus had the front facing nostrils of a land animal, but as whales became more and more aquatic this happened with their nostrils:

nostril_migration.gif


The evolution of whales

Other changes occurred as well. Legs go shorter and less useful on land. Eventually they became vestigial. The basilosaurus, the last whale to still have visible hind legs, were all but useless vestiges of what they once were:


Basilosaurus_cropped.png


Can you see the tiny legs on that drawing? Those are an accurate representation of the legs that they had:

Basilosaurus - Wikipedia


1280px-Basilosaurus_isis_fossil%2C_Nantes_History_Museum_03.jpg


Can you see the legs in that picture?

The evidence for evolution is endless. The evidence for creation is non-existent. Largely due to the fact that the ideas of creationists that have been tested have been shown to be wrong every time. They appear to be to afraid to craft another testable explanation.
 

Alone

Banned by request
The difference is that both evolution and ice ages have a ridiculous amount of objective independently verifiable evidence going for them.

And last but not least, neither requires the violation of any natural laws.

While the noah story has no evidence at all (it's just a legend story in an ancient book) and requires the violation of natural laws from top to bottom. Literally ALL key aspects of this story are physically impossible.

Worse still, the evidence we DO have, doesn't match up with this story at all.


So the real question is.... what is more important to you?
Actual evidence, or just the comfort of clinging to some bronze age folk tale...

If you care about actually being rationally justified in your beliefs, then you'll choose the path of evidence any day of the week.
If on the other hand you want to hold on to some religious beliefs simply because you like them, then I guess evidence doesn't matter.

But off course, the latter option doesn't make the evidence go away.
All you'll accomplish, is holding beliefs that can't rationally be justified and which actually require the irrational position of ignoring the actual evidence that contradicts the beliefs....

So....

Do you care about being rationally justified in your beliefs?
Is it important to you that the things that you believe, are actually accurate?
Do you want your beliefs about the world to match the evidence of reality?
You forgot to address the long descendants of monkeys, not only that what is the proof of the ice age or the dinosaurs for that matter, just because somebody made some bones and put them together in a museum so that they can make a lot of money off people coming and seeing them makes it true?, I never said the Noah's ark account was true I just said it was no harder to believe than any of the others?
 

dad

Undefeated
Any animal species is unlike other animal species. It's what makes them seperate species.
I am not talking about physical traits. That is why science is in the dark about what man really is, they only have the ability to see a small part of the picture.
Neither should we ignore them.
Solomon was wise and he never ignored animal traits. He noted for example the hard working ants. He would not have been so foolish as to look at ant legs or eyes, and try to conceive that as some similarity based on relatives!!!!


As demonstrated by genetics, yes.
All life is ultimately related.
Genetics of this present nature is limited to this nature. If Noah lived in a time when a different nature existed, then current genetics cannot be traced back that far. So all you could try and claim was that 'since the time of Noah, in this present nature, I believe that the similarity in genetics in animals mean that they are all related'

Since genetics today cannot be traced backward very far, genetics is no way to determine what animals and man was like in early earth history! It is useless in determining if life was created. It is useless as far as telling us about what evolved from what in the days of the early fossil record. It is useless in determining what animals and portion of life as a whole that should be in the fossil record. (which creatures could leave remains or not). It is useless in determining how evolution at that time worked and even if it was limited to reproduction, as we see today. It is useless in telling us anything about the spirit, or spiritual aspects of man. So, if you want to use modern DNA (you have no usable ancient DNA) in a court trail, fine. If you want to see if you are related to Napoleon..fine. If you want to learn about migration patterns after the flood, fine. If you want to talk origins...forget about it!

I have no such contentions.
This is true for every scientific idea.
Germ theory also doesn't claim that germs are exclusively responsible for the deseases associated with germs. For the simple reason that there is no way to test that.

All we can say, is that the available evidence is consistent with the model.
It's called intellectual honesty. You should try it some time...
Honesty is not defined by or limited to handicapping ourselves intellectually and dealing with a small fraction of the facts! Of course germs cause disease. But science can't tell us if evil spirits could sometimes influence how man comes across germs! It can't tell us how God could protect us from them, or heal us if we were diseased!


We're talking about evolution. The scientific model of evolution exists and you have to deny it because it conflicts with your religious beliefs.
False. Limited evolution, (the evolving we actually have observed) is fine! It is when you use your belief set to try to attribute that and that alone as the reason we are all here that you must be corrected.

Yes. All of science.
The parts of science that are included as science that are really just belief based nonsense with no evidence, observation, testing or proof are not real science. You can call rice pudding science if you like, it is still just what it is.
 

nPeace

Veteran Member
By that standard, any science that deals with events that aren't directly observed (e.g., archaeology, genetics, forensics, cosmology, geology) is "outside of science". Of course no scientist is beholden to your made-up, arbitrary standards.

Argumentation theory, or argumentation, is the interdisciplinary study of how conclusions can be reached through logical reasoning; that is, claims based, soundly or not, on premises.
Scientific argumentation
Main articles: Philosophy of science and Rhetoric of science
Perhaps the most radical statement of the social grounds of scientific knowledge appears in Alan G.Gross's The Rhetoric of Science (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). Gross holds that science is rhetorical "without remainder", meaning that scientific knowledge itself cannot be seen as an idealized ground of knowledge. Scientific knowledge is produced rhetorically, meaning that it has special epistemic authority only insofar as its communal methods of verification are trustworthy. This thinking represents an almost complete rejection of the foundationalism on which argumentation was first based.

Rhetoric of science
Rhetoric is best known as a discipline that studies the means and ends of persuasion. Science, meanwhile, is typically seen as the discovery and recording of knowledge about the natural world.
A key contention of rhetoric of science is that the practice of science is, to varying degrees, persuasive. The study of science from this viewpoint variously examines modes of inquiry, logic, argumentation, the ethos of scientific practitioners, the structures of scientific publications, and the character of scientific discourse and debates.

For instance, scientists must convince their community of scientists that their research is based on sound scientific method.
From a rhetorical point of view, scientific method involves problem-solution topoi (the materials of discourse) that demonstrate observational and experimental competence (arrangement or order of discourse or method), and as a means of persuasion, offer explanatory and predictive power. Experimental competence is itself a persuasive topos. Rhetoric of science is a practice of suasion that is an outgrowth of some of the canons of rhetoric.

Philosophy of science is a sub-field of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultimate purpose of science. This discipline overlaps with metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, for example, when it explores the relationship between science and truth. Philosophy of science focuses on metaphysical, epistemic and semantic aspects of science.

Several researchers have recently questioned the nature and status of the theory of UCA or have emphasized the difficulties in testing a theory of such broad scope.
For example, Ford Doolittle has disputed whether objective evidence for UCA, as described by a universal tree, is possible even in principle:

Indeed, one is hard pressed to find some theory-free body of evidence that such a single universal pattern relating all life forms exists independently of our habit of thinking that it should.

Indeed, one of the reasons that macroevolution (changes in biodiversity over time, space and lineages) has sometimes been a controversial topic is that processes underlying the generation of biological diversity generally operate at scales that are not open to direct observation or manipulation.


The Limits of the Rhetorical Analysis of Science
In the wake of the publication of Alan Gross’s The Rhetoric of Science, a debate ensued concerning the role of rhetoric in the analysis of science (Gross, 1990). It concerned Gross’s claim that science was rhetoric all the way down. The debate culminated in Rhetorical Hermeneutics, a book collection edited by Gross and William Keith (Gross and Keith, 1997). Featured was a lengthy essay by Dilip Gaonkar, an argument deeply skeptical of the possibility of a rhetoric of science in any shape or form. Gaonkar averred that rhetoric was, simply, not equal to the task of analyzing an enterprise so complex. Rhetoric was, Gaonkar asserted, not an analytic, but a productive art. Forced to do duty analytically, it revealed only how impoverished its machinery was. Rhetoric of science may be dismissed, however, only if we accept Gaonkar’s view of rhetoric. Rhetorical analysis is more than the mobilization of an analytical apparatus; it is also an orientation toward the persuasiveness of concepts that the philosopher W.D. Gallie calls “essentially contested.” To Gallie, what counts as science will never be settled: arguments concerning its nature and scope will never cease. For Gallie, this is to say that
a certain piece of evidence or argument, put forward by one side in an apparently endless dispute, can be recognized to have a definite logical force, even by those it fails to win over, or convert to the side in question; and that when this is the case, the conversion of a hitherto wavering opponent of the side in question can be seen to be justifiable (Gallie, 1968, 185).

The goal of science is to place its claims beyond argument. I think it is incontestable that, on occasion, it succeeds, as with evolutionary theory. When it does, rhetoric can have no purchase, since no legitimate forum for debate exists as a target for such analysis.
 

dad

Undefeated
The first whale ancestor that was found was Pakicetus. It was a more than reasonable conclusion that whale ancestors had to be land living mammals since whales are mammals and mammals evolved on the land. .
So what? Maybe they adapted (some of them) to land and then maybe back to water again!? Who knows? We certainly cannot take some fossil of a whale and jump to the sort of wild heathen conclusions you would like us to.
 

Alone

Banned by request
So what is the proof that I am a monkey? Prove to me that I am a monkey and I will concede again like I said I never said the noah account was true only that it was no harder to believe than any of the other things you mentioned
 

dad

Undefeated
Again, you're telling me what these entities think and how they behave without ever demonstrating to anybody that they actually exist in the first place. If you can't demonstrate the existence of some thinking entity, how on earth are you determining what said entities are thinking or feeling?
The way man has to know that spirits exists is Scripture. If you wave that away you have almost nothing to inform you. So, you are expressing disbelief...based on nothing. Whooopee doo.

And you seem to be telling me that the Bible can only be understood once a person is already a believer? Sorry, but that's an asinine and illogical way of thinking.
No more than saying a baby can't nurse and grow till after it is born.
 

Alone

Banned by request
Whether there is a God or not that still remains to be seen, however wouldn't a God be someone who could defy the nature and laws that he created?
 

dad

Undefeated
Categorically, and even logically, false. "Religion" posits deities and supernatural events, both of which are not found or are acceptable within science without objective evidence.

Definition of religion
1a : the state of a religious a nun in her 20th year of religion
b(1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural
(2) : commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
2 : a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
3 archaic : scrupulous conformity : conscientiousness
4 : a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith

Read it and weep.
You really don't know what you're talking about. Ever hear of "forensic evidence", for example?
Give us the most ancient example of this? Got any for say, 70 million (science) years ago?

And what the dna testing is confirming is that the fossil record on the evolution of life that we have millions of evidence of, rather clearly show links to current life form even though there will always be some gaps. Just because you don't understand nor believe the evidence doesn't negate what we well know.
In your dreams. Show us usable DNA from dinos?
It's truly unfortunate that you church/denomination is lying to you on this, much like my fundamentalist Protestant church did to me decades ago prior to me leaving it.
Don't do church.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
You forgot to address the long descendants of monkeys, not only that what is the proof of the ice age or the dinosaurs for that matter, just because somebody made some bones and put them together in a museum so that they can make a lot of money off people coming and seeing them makes it true?, I never said the Noah's ark account was true I just said it was no harder to believe than any of the others?


We are getting there. This is a long process. And please, you need to be aware of the Ninth Commandment. It is not just a ban on lying. It is a ban on bearing false witness against your neighbor. What evidence do you have that people put bones together just to make a lot of money? Being a research scientist is not a well paying job. I can assure you that the people involved in it do not do it for the money. If you make negative claims about others and cannot support them you almost certainly broke the Ninth Commandment And last time I checked there was no "I was lying for Jesus" exception.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Definition of religion
1a : the state of a religious a nun in her 20th year of religion
b(1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural
(2) : commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
2 : a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices
3 archaic : scrupulous conformity : conscientiousness
4 : a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith

Read it and weep.
Give us the most ancient example of this? Got any for say, 70 million (science) years ago?

In your dreams. Show us usable DNA from dinos?
Don't do church.
So accepting the fact of evolution is not a religion by your own definition. Thank you.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Whether there is a God or not that still remains to be seen, however wouldn't a God be someone who could defy the nature and laws that he created?
Sure, but would he purposefully make it look as if there was a natural cause for those observations that contradicted what happened? That would be planting false evidence. A form of lying. I thought that we had agreed that God does not lie.

Now some creationists here do believe that their God lied. Why? I really can't say.
 
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